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Press Release - 16th December 2020
GSVlabs Becomes OneValley to Help Startup Communities Pivot Online
OneValley announces 10X growth of virtual entrepreneurship platform and launches OneValley Ventures
Silicon Valley, December 16, 2020 -- GSVlabs has rebranded as OneValley following the unprecedented growth of Passport, its online platform that expands access to the resources and connections traditionally found in Silicon Valley to innovators anywhere in the world. In 2020 alone, OneValley added over 200,000 startups and entrepreneurs seeking critical support, resulting in 10X growth of the communities across its Passport and Passport OS platforms.
“2020 has spelled devastation for many startups and small businesses, but it’s also been a year of reinvention,” said Nikhil Sinha, CEO of OneValley. “The pandemic has drastically accelerated trends including a shift away from reliance on Silicon Valley and towards a more global and accessible definition of entrepreneurship. At OneValley, we are creating better ways to discover, support, and fund entrepreneurs globally.”
The pandemic has shut down hundreds of thousands of businesses in the US, but it’s also created the fastest growth in applications for new businesses since 2007. Entrepreneurship globally is also on the rise, with venture funding internationally surpassing venture funding in the US for the first time in 2018.
GSVlabs started as a startup accelerator and co-working space in Silicon Valley and Boston and launched Passport in 2019 in order to grow its reach and impact globally. 2020 brought rapid growth as startups joined the Passport platform in impressive numbers from across industries including biotech, fintech, edtech, and artificial intelligence. Passport OS, a customizable version of Passport for organizations, has been deployed by dozens of universities, incubators, accelerators, enterprises, and NGOs to support their own startup communities, including University College London, the University of North Texas, the Global Education and Leadership Foundation, Biolabs, the MiSK Foundation, and Gulftainer.
OneValley Ventures, the company’s new investment arm, was launched this year to identify pre-seed and seed funding opportunities emerging out of OneValley’s uniquely large and growing network of entrepreneurs and innovators in over 140 countries.
“OneValley Ventures is a natural extension of our work to democratize entrepreneurship,” said Juan Scarlett, Managing Director of OneValley Ventures. “In the process of growing a global ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, we can see early investment opportunities that aren’t visible to traditional venture capital. We look forward to making investment another critical level of support we can offer to promising founders around the world.”
Passport is a membership-based online platform that connects entrepreneurs with critical business tools and a global network of mentors, investors, and founders. Membership benefits include the following:
MENTORS:
Passport members can schedule online mentorship video calls with over 140 mentors in the Passport network who are founders or industry experts.
INVESTORS:
Over 450 venture capitalists and angel investors are on Passport looking to connect with dynamic, early-stage founders.
BUSINESS TOOL SAVINGS:
Passport members get access to nearly $1 million in discounts and credits from over 100 leading technology service providers including AWS, IBM, Zoom, Salesforce, and Stripe.
COMMUNITY:
Passport’s Slack-powered Founder Forum is a vibrant community of startups and founders across all industries offering feedback, advice, and insights.
RESOURCES:
Passport offers a curated library of hundreds of educational resources and guides including pitch decks and startup pitches, fundraising playbooks, business plans, and more.
ABOUT ONEVALLEY
OneValley is a global entrepreneurship platform that supports entrepreneurs, accelerates startups, and empowers organizations across the globe that foster innovation communities. OneValley directly supports over 35,000 members and indirectly another 175,000+ through our B2B partnerships and platforms, powered by our online platform Passport, the world’s most comprehensive innovation platform connecting Silicon Valley to the World and the World to Silicon Valley.
